


What’s About To Happen

by Anonymous



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Beating, Electrocution, M/M, Major Character Injury, Rape, Restraints, Torture, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-26 17:44:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12562768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Rejected by the Red Lion, confused by his calculations, Coran worries he’s losing his touch.But give his life for his Paladins? That he can do.





	1. Chapter 1

“Come on then, ugly.”

_Once they reach their Lions, they can wormhole back to the Castle. They land, they leave the creatures in their hangar, it would only take them a few dobashes to make it to the bridge. They take their stations, and -_

The blow sank into his belly, forcing the air from his lungs, the pain sending a sick aching feeling from his stomach to to the back of his throat. With nothing to protect him besides the layer of unfortunate middle-aged spread he’d noticed over the last century or so, he couldn’t defend against it, not with his wrists tied the way they were, but then that wasn’t the point of this game. 

The Paladins needed to get to the Castleship before the Galra did, and the only way the Galra would find it was if Coran told them where it was. 

Coran was playing a different game. As revealing the location of the Castle wasn’t an option, and as every moment he spent as a prisoner would invariably mean more pain, he intended to spend as much time unconscious as possible.

He tried to gauge how long the Paladins needed. _They reach their Lions, then they can wormhole back to the Castle. They land, they leave-_

This time it was his mouth, his head snapping to the left as the big soldier hit him. His lips tore against his teeth, jawbone clicking, and before he could catch his breath he got another, square in the face, and he felt his nose crunch and break. It was broken before, of course, in the incident with Alfor and the excessively high stack of alchemical texts, and he’d secretly liked how it made him look tough but distinguished; but he’d forgotten exactly how painful it was. Blood ran down his throat, and he tried to ignore how sick he felt as he spat it in his captor’s face. 

It was comforting to visualise them. Shiro, weight of the world on his shoulders. Keith, so sensitive and trying to hide it. Big hearted Hunk, Lance the son he’d never had, and his beloved Number Five... and Princess Allura. He’d sworn to Alfor he’d protect her, and he could still do that, could still serve,even in a Galra torture pit. 

_They’ve reached their Lions, they’re back at the Castle, they’re all at their stations, safe and free and-_

The Galra released his bonds and he fell to the ground, legs weak, head spinning. He was being kicked, boots crashing against his back and his side, and he tried to protect his head but then they could get at his belly and between his legs. Coran writhed and scratched and fought them every step of the way, more to buy the Paladins a few extra minutes than because it came as any great surprise; and he took pride in the fact that it took three of them to hold him down. 

His legs were wrenched uncomfortably far apart, and then he felt the commander settle behind him. Galra were big, and Coran took a deep breath and braced himself, but even so he couldn’t prepare for the sharp, tearing sensation of the other man forcing his way inside him. He’d slicked himself with some sort of oil, but it was a small mercy. Coran felt as though he were being split in two, his guts speared with every thrust, as his captor dug his claws into Coran’s hips and growled with saisfaction. He forced his face into the dirt floor of the cell and went fast and rough, and Coran was shaking with pain by the time he felt the rush of hot sticky fluid inside him. 

He forced himself to look up. 

“Is that it? Wham, bam, thank you Coran? Not much of a hit with the ladies, I suspect, this one-“ 

A kick drove the air from his lungs, sand then he _was_ sick. One of them stepped back, making a sound that was half disgust, half sympathy. He was smaller - younger? - and even in his current state Coran took note. Coran had trained many young soldiers, and this one was inexperienced.

The others set to him with a will, and Coran let his mind wander. 

_He’s crossing the drawbridge and entering the great hall, warm and brightly lit by candles and crystals, and everyone is there and wearing their finest. The Castle of Lions, where he’d been a child helping his grandfather, and a guardsman, and an engineer, and finally a trusted advisor, sitting in the place of honour at Alfor’s right hand. The Castle where he’s lived and worked and fallen in love, and all his friends and family are there smiling at him..._

There was a growl of frustration, and a blow so hard it made him scream and see stars. The interrogators were leaving the cell, and through his pain Coran grinned. They’d given up. They must know that the Paladins had escaped, the Castle was safe, and that was worth everything. He felt warm as he drifted into unconsciousness. 


	2. Chapter 2

Coran awoke to the sound of someone outside his cell. He yanked his ruined trousers back up onto his hips, stretched out on the cold hard floor of the cell and took a quick inventory. Broken nose, chipped teeth, cracked ribs. A concussion, probably, and he might be bleeding inside, was definitely bleeding downstairs. 

Information he’d given them about Volton and the Castle: absolutely nothing. _Score one for the Gorgeous Man!_

The soldier who dragged him to his feet was the inexperienced one, he was almost certain. 

“Get moving,” he growled, and Coran staggered out of his cell into a dimly lit corridor. Even with his nose and moustache clotted with blood, he could tell it smelled terrible, and the occasional faint scream bled through the walls. Coran coughed and spat.

“I saw you back there, lad,” he observed. “Do you think the others noticed?” The Galra ignored him, but Coran thought it took him a very conscious effort, although maybe that was wishful thinking. He persisted. 

“I know what it’s like, being the new boy. Worried you’ll let the side down, your stomach’s not going to be strong enough. Still, it’s good that the boss is giving you another chance, eh? I know I’m just a beaten up old Altean, but everyone’s got to start somewhere. Maybe he wants you to prove yourself.”

Galra were hard to read. Coran injected as much sympathy as he could into his voice. 

“It must be extra difficult for you though. What are you, runt of the litter, or just a beta? I’m sure you do your best though-“

A rough snarl, and the young Galra shoved him against the wall. He felt a sick surge of triumph as something gave in the back of his head, saw sparks, and then his vision went. He tasted salt water in his nose and mouth, and his last thought was a memory of Lance telling him about living by the ocean. 

When he awoke, he felt oddly better, clear headed and pain free. He was in a regeneration pod, and for a tick he thought that everything up until that point had been a dream, that he was about to emerge into a deserted Castle of Lions alongside Allura. 

Then he saw her, staring at him through the glass, a narrow smile on her lips. 

Haggar.


	3. Chapter 3

He was dragged from the pod to a chair, arms and legs bound. Haggar moved with him, her posture stiff, smile mocking.

“Coran. Son of Mara the warrior, the daughter of Hieronymus the builder. Will you answer my questions about the Castle of Lions?”

“You know I won’t,” he snapped. 

“I suspected as much,” Haggar said, with the air of someone who had taken care of the formalities. “You were always so desperately loyal to Alfor, even though you were only his pity fuck.” She looked pointedly down to his trousers, torn in a way that left very little to the imagination when it came to what the soldiers had done to him, before letting her gaze travel slowly back up his body to meet his eyes. 

“Witch,” Coran spat, but he couldn’t stop himself from shivering, cold and vulnerable.

“Very original. Did you come up with that by yourself? I know you had to invent your own nicknames, ‘Coranic’. Acting like you belonged with the Paladins of old... much like your new crop, I imagine. Keeping you around out of pity.”

It was an obvious tack, but Coran was at a low ebb. 

“Not true.”

“You think I care about your opinion any more than Alfor and Zarkon did?You’re pathetic, and I’m going to use that to my advantage. I’m going to take your guts out and show them to you. I’m going to hurt you until you scream for your Paladins to come and save you, and I’ll broadcast your shame for the whole universe to see. Then when they arrive, Voltron will be ours.”

“I won’t do it!”

“Well... they will try and rescue you either way. They think they are worthy of the name Paladin, and that boy, what is his name, Shiro? He has a look of the young Alfor, doesn’t he? All long limbs and tan skin.”

He tried to keep his face neutral, but Haggar bared her teeth with delight. 

“You think so too, don’t you? You think about him that way sometimes, you pervert. You imagine him putting his cock in your raddled old hole... as if he’d ever want you.”

Coran felt his face burning, dull and shameful. His eyes watered and he squeezed them shut as he tried to hold onto his last shred of dignity, but he could feel her cold fingers in his head, and she laughed at him. 

“You want to spar with him... to spar with him and to lose, and then when you suck him his hands will be pulling your hair... is that all it takes to get you off? You sad old man...”

“Stop it!”

Haggar moved behind him, and he heard metallic clicks and clanks that made his spine crawl. 

“When he gets here, I’ll kill him in front of you,” she said, almost conversationally, and then he saw what she was holding in her hand and his heart quailed. 

“But you’ll be begging me to let you help me by then.”

Coral became aware he was keening between his teeth, heart pounding in his ears as his vision tunnelled until all he could see was the blade she held in her hand.


	4. Chapter 4

Coran awoke with a start, screaming and thrashing within the narrow confines of the regeneration pod until he came back to himself and realised where he was. He ran his hands frantically over his skin until he was sure he was intact, a long, white scar bisecting the reddish hair that ran down his belly the only sign of what he’d been through. He trembled and sweated, sick and weak with horror at the memory. And now here he was, practically good as new thanks to the pod, and she could do it again, could cut him and draw him out, as many times as she liked...

For the first time, Coran let himself cry.

He was dragged back to the chair, struggling and writhing all the way. Two black-clad druids stood either side of him, while Haggar looked on. His shirt was ripped aside, and his trousers forced to his knees. 

“Are you ready to help me find the Paladins yet?”

Coran was still fighting. He grit his teeth and shook his head, eyes wide. 

“No? Very well. You might as well be of some use then, while we wait for them together. My druids have been wondering about these markings of yours. What makes an Altean sacred? You’re not, of course, but I do have to start somewhere. I have many plans for the Princess Allura, and I’m sure she’ll appreciate knowing that I practised on you first.”

Coran shook his head, but hopelessness was welling up in him, rushing in his ears and squeezing at his chest. 

“You’ll never get your hands on her,” he said, but his voice sounded strange and hollow. 

Haggar ran her finger along his chest, and a Druid stepped forward, slicing the skin where she had indicated in a deep, straight line. She repeated the gesture, and Coran realised what lay between the two cuts, the blue stripe that ran between his nipple and the base of his ribcage, his _favourite_ stripe, and then he knew what they intended and he panicked. 

“No! Oh no no no, please no...”

They dissected down, precise and unhurried, dabbing his blood away whenever it threatened to obscure their field of vision. Coran screamed and howled until his throat tore and he could only whimper. The most sensitive, intimate place you could touch an Altean, and they were cutting into it, cutting part of him away...

He couldn’t see exactly what they were doing, restrained as he was, but as an engineer he recognised quintessence channels and conductivity meters, and he cringed as he felt the itching, intrusive pain of sensors being placed beneath his skin, and he began to struggle again, sobbing, frantic. 

“No please no please no...”

They threw a switch, and Coran was in agony like he’d never known. His marks felt like they were made of acid, crawling, burning, eating into his skin. He wanted to tear at his face and his chest, but he was bound still and everything was white hot pain, and all he could do was scream for his mother and pray that this was the end of him.


	5. Chapter 5

Coran lay on his back in his bed, staring at the ceiling. 

They’d been on their way to the swapmoon, or back from the swapmoon. They’d been pretending to be pirates, and Alfor had wanted to drink in all the most dangerous looking bars, and Lance had bought a Kaltenecker. He was in the back of a shuttle, while Alfor flew his young family around the hangar, showing them his Lions, and Coran felt such pride and awe in his friend and his King, only now it was Shiro and Pidge instead, and he was teaching them to manoeuvre. He was a little boy again, watching as his grandfather showed Hunk how to harvest the crystal from a Balmera... 

The memories were disjointed, and he suspected some of them were wrong, but they were comforting. Sometimes he tried to interpret them, or rearrange them, but if he tried too hard then the ringing in his ears would rise up and his vision would flash black and he’d remember a terrible burning smell, and he would have to hide under his covers and cry until the memory passed.

It was a timeless, formless state, but eventually, he realised he was becoming aware of the passage of ticks and dobashes, and he supposed that meant that he was recovering somewhat.

He’d woken up in this neat, sparse room, not in a cryopod, although the state of his wounds and his general health suggested he’d spent some time in one. He was mostly healed, but with white in his hair and broken teeth and an ugly scar on his torso where one of his marks had been, no longer gorgeous. 

They had given him clothes, a grey jumpsuit. Although it lacked the flair of his uniform it was clean and warm. He had his own shower, with hot water and soap. No razor for his moustache though, but he supposed that was understandable. They fed him three times a day, a good approximation of Altean cuisine. Coran was used to field rations and mess kits, and he liked it just fine. The healing pods restored any metabolic losses as part of their function, but it wasn’t the same as feeling full after a meal. 

He ate, and slept, and grew stronger. Soon, he could pace the entire length and breadth of his room. He would be ready to run when his Paladins came. 

The door opened, and his heart leapt, but then he saw Haggar. 

While his brain was still frozen with fear, his body reacted, and he found himself huddling in the corner of the room, trying desperately to press himself though the wall, anything to avoid being near her, being _touched_ by her... 

“Coran,” she said softly, and he whimpered. 

“I’m glad to see you looking so well. Your tissue samples have been extremely useful in our work. Galra are one thing, but to be able to work with the species born to quintessence... it has been transformative. So to thank you, I wanted to give you one further chance.”

She reached out and stroked his hair softly, and he cringed. 

“Your grandfather built the Castle. Alfor created the Lions. You have worked on them nearly all your life. Help me build something even greater. Something that can defeat Voltron.”

Coran was astonished to find that his primary emotion was deep offense. The very idea that he might betray them now, after all he’d been through... he felt a spark of pride, and it made him defiant. 

“You’re mad,” he croaked. 

“If you don’t help us, I’ll have you stripped naked and sent to the barracks. See how long you last.”

Coran took a deep breath. “Well,” he said hoarsely. “Then I suppose I’ll just have to entertain the troops.”

She shook her head and sighed, but for a fleeting second she looked as though she were trying to suppress a smile, and she looked like Honerva again. 

Then she made a gesture, and the Galra soldier behind her snapped manacles onto his wrists and ankles. He was shoved backwards onto the bed, and the soldier held him down. 

“You would rather be the mechanic of Voltron than create a weapon of your own?”

“Obviously.”

She reached out and snapped one of his fingers. 

The pain was bright white behind his eyes, making him choke, making his eyes water. He couldn’t believe how strong she was. 

“Poor Coran,” she said, and broke another. 

He sobbed and pleaded but she persisted, until his hands were a broken mess. The pain was all consuming, and the sight of the bruised and bent fingers made him sick. 

“You’re no use to them at all now,” she said, and left him.


End file.
